As part of our on-boarding process for new PPC clients we undertake a Free Google Ads Audit of their Google Ads account. This has given us an insight into how other agencies manage accounts.

Something that happens
most of the time, is that accounts are not regularly maintained. This is known
as “set and forget”. Basically, campaigns would be set up in the account and
then that would be all the work carried out on it, aside from the occasional bid
change, presumably when urged by the client.

If you suspect that
this is happening to your Google Ads account, you should request access to your
account if you don’t already have it. Once you’ve done that, you can check the
change history on your account to see how often work is being done on it.

The ‘Change History’ page can be found by clicking the link in the bottom left corner.

Here are some key
reasons as to why your account should be regularly checked.

Search Terms

15% of Google searches are entirely new, therefore the search terms that lead to clicks on
your ads need to be reviewed on a regular basis. Failure to do this could
result in a lot of wasted spend. Our experienced PPC managers can see patterns
in search queries to be able to add negative keywords in bulk to drastically
reduce wasted spend. They are also able to see opportunities for account
expansion within the search queries to make your accounts as profitable as
possible.

Google Ads

In the last two years,
Google Ads has changed several times. The most notable of which is the name
change from AdWords. Also, the ads that appear in searches have grown quite
larger, expanding from 1 headline to 3 as well as the descriptions getting
larger. Additionally, the Google Ads interface was revamped over a year ago, which
some users are still struggling to get used to. Finally, keyword matching has
been changed so that “close variant” search terms will match with keywords. It
is important for accounts to be constantly looked at to see how any changes
will affect the performance.

Do you own a business with a Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords) account that you think should be performing better?

Were you sold on “getting
loads of enquiries” but find your phone more silent than a library?

Here is a list of simple
tips to help your PPC account run more efficiently.

Match types

Do you have broad match keywords throughout your account? Those bad boys will get you so much irrelevant traffic. If you have a modest budget it is better to have more control. Exact match keywords give the most control.

Location targeting

Where are your ads
appearing? Country wide? Worldwide? If you only want business from
20 miles of your location, you don’t want people in Australia clicking your ad.
It is amazingly easy for this to happen if your account isn’t set up correctly.

Tracking

Why do you have a
Google Ads account? What do you want from it? It is possible to see so much
information about people who call your business or fill in a website form. You
can find out what they searched for as well as when and where they were when
they searched. You can use this information to make your account spend more
efficiently.

Structure

Does your Google Ads
account have a clear structure with consistent names for the campaigns and ad
groups? If this is not the case, then this suggests a lack of organization in
your account which could foreshadow other problems.

Negative keywords

Your account has all
the right keywords that your potential customers will be searching for but
that’s not all the keyword work that needs to be done on the account. How do
you stop searches with irrelevant words from leading to clicks on your website?
The answer is negative keywords, you can add a massive list of them and apply
to your account, so you won’t have to worry about those terms coming up again.

What can you do?

Have a look through
your account and see if you can find any of the issues above and get them
addressed asap to improve your results.

Today I did a search for a weight loss drink, I have put a little weight on whilst the world cup has been on so decided its time to do something about it. Eventually I found a really great diet product called Boom Bod and thought I would give that a go. So I did what every normal person would do and googled Boom Bod.

And guess what I found ? A PPC/Adwords advert for a company called www.uncommon.co.uk. And what do www.uncommon.co.uk do ? They offer work space. Nothing whatsoever to do with diet products!

This got me thinking, if I had a pound for every time I saw an advert that failed to match the search I have just searched I would be a millionaire ( I do more or less spend my entire days online doing searches, I know it sounds boring)

What if I started documenting this ? I could have a bit of harmless fun. I could call it Epic PPC Fails.

So basically Uncommon.co.uk are running Adwords on terms that are relevant to a diet product. The return on investment must be pretty poor, unless of course somebody at www.uncommon.co.uk is actually selling diet products out the back door.

I decided to try and speak to somebody at uncommon.co.uk and eventually I spoke to a lady at lady named Gosia. I thad about 30 seconds on the phone with her, she could not wait to get me off the phone.

She told me that she will be telling her agency to amend the advert! I asked her if she thought it could be possible that they were wasting money on other irrelevant terms. She said thanks I am not interested and slammed the phone down.